Bio Security – During 2021, RSPB worked with over 100 pupils from primary schools across Scotland to co-design biosecurity activities in a digital education pack. Their ideas included board games, art activities, outdoor activities, digital games, treasure hunts, songs, and films. For example, pupils from the Small Isles Primary invented a board game based on the playing principles of Monopoly, where pupils can work together to eradicate rats from their islands by answering questions and collecting Conservation Points to buy biosecurity measures. The physical Save our Seabirds board game is now available for free to any school that would like to run the biosecurity programme with their pupils. More details here.
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Elephant Times – Here’s the link to ET 2.4, the most recent issue of the Elephant Times. It builds on the Commonwealth Awareness themes in the previous two editions. Here is a link to the first ET Supplement: Birchfield Commonwealth Connections.
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Next Door Nature – The National Lottery Fund has allocated a further £5m this month to its next-door nature scheme, which is being delivered by the Wildlife Trusts as part of a £22m fund to mark Queen Elizabeth’s Platinum Jubilee. The money will fund around 200 community-led local projects to create wild habitats in deprived built-up areas, encourage councils to let wildflowers grow on verges, rewild school grounds, and greening up gardens to provide more space for nature along streets.
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Paws Up – Polar Bear International has produced educational units about polar bears and the changing sea ice habitat in the Arctic.
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Plastic Arctic – An international review study just released by the Alfred Wegener Institute shows, the flood of plastic has reached all spheres of the Arctic. Large quantities of plastic transported by rivers, the air and shipping can now be found in the Arctic Ocean. High concentrations of microplastic can be found in the water, on the seafloor, remote beaches, in rivers, and even in ice and snow. The plastic is not only a burden for ecosystems; it could also worsen climate change. The study is published in the journal Nature Reviews Earth & Environment.
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For Fifty Years – IIED: the International Institute for Environment and Development is the latest orgaisation to celebrate 50 years of existence. It’s plans to mark this include inviting former staff and friends to join a new alumni group on LinkedIn to help tell the story of the past five decades, and a series of articles by IIED staff considering its evolution, future ambition and what has been learned on the way.
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Panda History – WWF is 60 years old. Click here to read about some of its achievements. And here to take a quiz to see how much you know about its history and development.
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Global Learning Masters – The Institute of Education – University College London’s Faculty of Education and Society – offers an MA in Global Learning. This is an online programme to support anyone interested in how education can respond to and promote learning about global issues such as sustainability, climate change and global citizenship. The programme aims to provide participants with skills and knowledge to run educational initiatives such as embedding global and sustainability themes into the curriculum within their institution. It is particularly suitable for teachers interested in helping their pupils engage with global issues, and people working with NGOs and other development education organisations. Applications close on 13 May 2022. You can find out more about the MA here.
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#FoulshawOspreys – Two Ospreys returned to Foulshaw Moss reserve in Cumbria on March 30th within about 7 hours of each other despite thousands of miles of separate travel. You can read more about their return here and see them on the 24 hour osprey cam.
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Mucosphere News – Scientists at UTS have discovered a new species that has the potential to sequester carbon naturally, even as oceans warm and become more acidic. The abundant microbe photosynthesises and releases a carbon-rich exopolymer that attracts and immobilises other microbes. It then eats some of the entrapped prey before abandoning its exopolymer “mucosphere”. Having trapped other microbes, the exopolymer is made heavier and sinks, forming part of the ocean’s natural biological carbon pump. More details c/o the Envionmental News Network here.
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Canis lupus – The natural sciences department at the University of Manchester has conducted a habitat suitability model and found that reintroducing grey wolves (Canis lupus) to Scotland’s Highlands and Grampian mountains should be feasible. Using land cover, prey and road density along with human density, those two areas strongly emerged as the most consistent sites, which the researches predicted could support between 50 and 94 packs. Habitat suitability is only one factor to consider when reintroducing wolves; in the context of Scotland, other factors such as the political willingness and social and economic factors are likely to weigh more heavily on future decisions about whether to introduce this species back to the British Isles. There’s more here and you can read the research report here.
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The Conger Ice Shelf – For the first time since satellites started studying the continent, East Antarctica has lost an entire ice shelf, according to an article in The Conversation by academics from Edinburgh and Northumbria universities.
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86 Gigawatts – New research published by RenewableUK shows the total capacity of the UK’s offshore wind projects will be 86GW if all the projects currently proposed get planning permission and then can be connected to the Grid. This will be more than eight times current operational capacity (around 10.5 GW) and over two and half times the typical maximum electricity demand. It is larger than that planned by China (75 GW).
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108 Billion Human Dead – Today, humans comprise 7% of all humans who’ve ever lived. 7.95 billion of us are now alive and about 108 billion have lived through human history. Each year 140 million babies are born, and 60 million people die (in the UK it’s 500,000 or so – 10,000 a week on average). Max Rosser has an hourglass graphic on Our World in Data to help illustrate these huge numbers.